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It’s not often that a Made in Mass story starts with a discussion about a conference table. Concealer Brush

But in this case, at a company that admits it’s a little “twisted.”

“This table was a result of a couple crazy guys from the area, myself included, that like to make thing,” said Mark Borsari, president and CEO at Sanderson MacLeod.

What his company really likes to make is brushes – specifically twisted wire brushes.

“Our smallest brush -- you could put two or three of them on a nickel. And our largest brush runs up to probably 17 feet long,” Borsari said.

Sanderson MacLeod offers brush solutions to all kinds of companies around the globe.

“Our clients come to us trying to find out completely new and unique ways to do the product that most people take for granted,” Borsari said.

One such product was invented at the Palmer mainstay.

In 1958 SanMac received a call from a California cosmetic group looking for a new way to apply mascara.

Soon, this Western Massachusetts outfit would become the first producer of twisted wire mascara brushes in the country.

“Very few people realize that a lot of the brushes that they’ll see when they’re walking down the aisle at CVS were right here from Palmer,” Borsari said.

Beauty products are not the company’s only concentration.

“This is one of our latest lines we put in. This is making a medical style brush,” Borsari said.

Everything from cosmetic to medical, to firearms, and high tech -- if a particular industry needs a twisted wire brush, SanMac is both where they start, and more importantly, where they stay.

“It’s really easy for somebody to make a good brush. It’s really hard to make a million brushes, and we’ll do probably a little over 100 million brushes here in 2023,” Borsari said.

SanMac operates what is known as a “clean” business model. They don’t sell individual brushes, but rather they work with a multitude of larger operations and become those individual company’s personal brush making division.

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